I’m seeing a lot of commentary on disappointing youth turnout, some of it leading with Bernie Sanders’ remark, “Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing in young people in? And the answer is ‘no.'”
Your assessment will depend on expectations. Youth turnout increased in most states:
It didn’t increase enough for Sanders, who won the youth vote by margins as large as 47 points in Tennessee but didn’t experience a tsunami of youth voting.
I am also seeing suggestions that turnout of all ages set records–for example, in South Carolina. But that state’s population is growing by 1.3% per year, so the narrow increase in the number of votes cast since 2008 actually represents a significant decline in participation.
CIRCLE is working on comparative graphs for past elections, but their recent 2020 graph certainly reminds me of one they released somewhat later in the 2016 cycle. Biden now is about where Clinton was then.
It hardly needs to be said that if Biden is the nominee, he will have to engage youth better than Clinton did four years ago. Ideological positioning, rhetoric, and the candidate are not the only factors. The Clinton campaign did a poor job of nuts-and-bolts outreach to youth, and the Biden campaign should invest more. That means investing in diverse young people to do the organizing, not bombarding youth with messages.
I am teaching a seminar on the political philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. The salient issues include race and racism, peace and violence, the nature of democracy, and the meaning of American history. At the same time, I am personally interested in what it means to treat King as a philosopher and to define philosophy to include what King does.
His words are meant to affect events in the world. Often he reflects on what has just happened. His written and spoken words belong to episodes (such as specific boycotts), campaigns (like Montgomery or Birmingham), and the Freedom Movement as a whole. These episodes and campaigns are expressions of ideas that King puts into words, as do his colleagues in the same movement.
King is often obviously strategic. To name just one example, he says that he “should indicate why” he has come to Birmingham. The answer he gives–he is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which has a Birmingham chapter that asked him to come–is not in any respect false. But it is also far from the whole truth. King has good strategic reasons not to write, “We struggled in Albany, GA because the police chief there was savvy and media-friendly and avoided confrontation. His counterpart in Birmingham, Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, is an overtly white supremacist bully who can be counted on to react violently, and we have rushed here just in time to confront him on national TV before his term in office ends.” This would be part of the truth but would not be smart strategy to say.
A more troubling example is the opening sentence of Stride to Freedom: “On December 1, 1955, an attractive Negro seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, boarded the Cleveland Avenue Bus …” In these pages, King evades the fact that Rosa Parks was a deeply experienced and trained organizer whose main issue had been sexual violence against Black women, which (as he neglects to say) was relevant to the Montgomery Bus Boycott because White drivers harassed Black female passengers. But again, King is being strategic: picking his battles, reading his audience.
King is also prophetic, in a particular sense. The Hebrew prophets don’t have crystal balls and don’t pretend to make forecasts. They admonish their audiences to action. They are prophetic not in the sense of prediction but exhortation; they try to make things true. Thus, when King writes, “the goal of America is freedom,” that is not a description of a trend over time. It is an effort to make freedom become America’s goal. “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God.”
A frequent interpretive question is whether we should take any given argument strictly on its face. For instance, King makes a quick but tight argument for natural law in the Letter from Birmingham Jail. To paraphrase: human beings have certain natural capacities to flourish; a law is just if it “uplifts” those capacities and unjust if it “degrades” them.
Does King believe in natural law? Or is this a strategic move in a letter to pastors? (I would say: both.) This exegetical question doesn’t really matter if you view King as a political leader, but it is important if you want to take him fully seriously as a theorist.
One view of philosophy is that it is all about truth and is carefully distinct from strategic discourse and prophesy (and religious faith). There is a sense in which King is less of a truth-teller than, say, James Baldwin in the same years. He is more likely to think about how a specific audience (including a morally unreliable white audience) will react to his words and tailors them accordingly to produce the results he wants. He is more likely to express ideas that he hopes will prevail in order to make them come true, even though he knows they have not ever yet been true.
On the other hand, all moral and political philosophy is writing (or speech) that aims to affect an audience. It always has outcomes, whether intended or not, and whether in the direction of change or stasis. Like King, Machiavelli and Hobbes wrote for explicit audiences and may have wanted to persuade other audiences implicitly. As Machiavelli addressed the Medici, so King writes a letter to white pastors that he knows will be read by many others.
King is, however, much more thoughtful than most modern professional philosophers are about the ethics of his speech-as-action. (To say that he is thoughtful does not mean he is always right, as the Rosa Parks example indicates). He must be more thoughtful because he bears a far heavier burden. As a leader of a movement of oppressed people, he doesn’t really have “freedom of speech.” He has a responsibility to use his speech effectively under severe constraints. And that makes his texts all the more complex as works of philosophy.
Tufts University, Tisch College, Medford, MA – Tufts University
Open Date: Feb 28, 2020. Deadline: May 29, 2020 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time
Description
Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life will award a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Civic Science for the 2020-21 academic year (June 1, 2020-May 31, 2021). This postdoctoral fellowship is offered in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH and involves some work at Kettering’s offices in Dayton as well as full-time employment at Tufts in the Boston area.
The Tisch College Civic Science initiative (https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/civic-studies/civic-science), led by Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Samantha Fried, aims to reframe the relationships among scientists and scientific institutions, institutions of higher education, the state, the media and the public. It also asks about the relationships and distinctions among those institutions, historically and today. With this context in mind, Civic Science seeks to…
Reconfigure the national conversation on divisive and complex issues that are both scientific and political in nature, thereby connecting scientific institutions, research, and publications to people’s values, beliefs, and choices.
Define and advance the public good in science, thereby finding ways for scientific institutions to better serve communities and human needs.
Develop curricula that simultaneously attend to scientific and civic issues and that teach students to understand and communicate both kinds of narratives together to a variety of audiences.
Develop approaches to democratic governance that are attuned to the role of the scientific enterprise in society.
Ask what it would mean to earn the trust of communities that have been historically marginalized by the institution of science, and what science would look like if this was a priority.
Intervene at institutional and grassroots levels, alongside a robust theoretical analysis.
A PhD is required. Applicants must also demonstrate a strong interest in investigating the intersections of science and civic matters as the focus of their postdoctoral year.
Civic Science is interdisciplinary, and this fellowship is open to specialists in any relevant field.
Qualifications
A scholar with a Ph.D. in any relevant discipline who is not yet tenured.
Desirable qualifications include, but are not limited to, the following:
A background, degree, or certificate in a STEM –– or STEM-adjacent –– field, OR
Work on strengthening, designing, or evaluating democratic processes, OR
A background in political science or political theory, OR
A background in science, technology, and society (STS), OR
A background in critical theory, media studies, rhetoric, philosophy of science and technology, or science communication.
The ideal candidate may have more than one of these backgrounds.
The Postdoctoral Fellow will attend and participate in the Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tisch College from June 18-26, 2020. The Fellow will conduct research related to Civic Science, both independently and in collaboration with Peter Levine, Samantha Fried, and the Kettering Foundation. The Fellow may teach or co-teach one course to undergraduates in the Civic Studies Major. The Fellow will attend orientation and research meetings at the Kettering Foundation as requested.
A cover letter that includes a description of your research goals during the fellowship year (which must relate to Civic Science) and courses you would like to offer;
Your CV;
One writing sample;
Three letters of recommendation which should be uploaded by your recommenders to Interfolio directly; and
Teaching course evaluations, if available.
Opens March 1, 2020 and will continue until the position is filled Questions about the position should be addressed to Dr. Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Tisch College at Peter.Levine@tufts.edu.
Non-Discrimination Statement Our institution does not discriminate against job candidates on the basis of actual or perceived gender, gender identity, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or religion. Tufts University, founded in 1852, prioritizes quality teaching, highly competitive basic and applied research and a commitment to active citizenship locally, regionally and globally. Tufts University also prides itself on creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. Current and prospective employees of the university are expected to have and continuously develop skill in, and disposition for, positively engaging with a diverse population of faculty, staff, and students. Tufts University is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer. We are committed to increasing the diversity of our faculty and staff and fostering their success when hired. Members of underrepresented groups are welcome and strongly encouraged to apply. If you are an applicant with a disability who is unable to use our online tools to search and apply for jobs, please contact us by calling Johny Laine in the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) at 617.627.3298 or at Johny.Laine@tufts.edu. Applicants can learn more about requesting reasonable accommodations at http://oeo.tufts.edu/.
Here is a rather standard model for policy analysis, representing the content of a fairly typical public policy course or a textbook such as Eugene Bardach’s A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis (2000).
The analyst is a professional: a staffer, a consultant, or possibly an elected official. This person assembles evidence, combines it with evaluative criteria (e.g., fairness or efficiency) and makes predictions. The result is advice, probably in the form of a memo or slide deck. Methods for reaching conclusions may include, among others, cost/benefit analysis or sensitivity analysis.
The recipient is an authority: a decision-maker within a government or perhaps someone whose role is like a government’s, e.g., a corporate executive who sets internal policies. Influenced by the analyst, the authority makes policy, which takes the form of taxes or fees, prohibitions and penalties, authorizations, subsidies and rewards, licenses, personnel deployments, etc.
In turn, the policy influences “society.” That is a complex amalgam, but a major component of society is a set of markets that can be affected by governmental policy. As a result of the society’s own dynamics, plus the government’s policy intervention, certain outcomes arise. The analyst had tried both to predict and assess those outcomes (hence the dotted lines), and did a good job if the outcomes turn out to be good.
In contrast, here is the model of Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues. I have explained it in more detail before.
To some extent, these two models can be reconciled. For instance, the analyst in the first model collects evidence, some which may be about biophysical conditions (Which medicines work on which diseases?), attributes of community (How equal are people in the population?) and “rules-in-use” (What actual laws and/or norms are people observed to follow?). Evaluative criteria appear in both models.
But the models also differ in some important ways.
Where is the analyst in Ostrom’s model? Perhaps it is anyone who can observe and analyze the institution, including participants in it. In fact, analysts always work within institutions, with their own biophysical conditions, attributes of community, etc.
The first model treats “government” as the major actor, whereas the second sees institutions all over the place. According to Ostrom et al., a government is a set of institutions, but so is the analyst’s agency, the market they’re considering regulating, and even the discussions that generate the evaluative criteria. Whereas the first model is linear–from the analyst to the outcome–the second one is deeply recursive.
Here are some questions to ask about either model, or about any model for analyzing policy:
What is the value of analysis? Specifically, what is the value of relatively professional and trained, yet not hyper-specialized, analysis? What does an analyst know that immersed participants don’t know? What can someone with an MPP contribute?
How should we think about time? In the first model, the whole point is the future. As business school students learn, it’s rational to ignore sunk costs. The only questions are: What will happen if we act in a given way, and is it good? The second model is arguably static, a map of how an institution functions at time-T. But where did it come from? What would change it into an entirely different institution? And for both models: should the past matter?
Whose responsibility is it to decide? Perhaps a “decision-maker” inevitably decides, even if it’s in favor of the status quo. Then perhaps people who are decision-makers should learn to have a mental bias in favor of making decisions and taking responsibility for them. But do you or I have a moral responsibility to be decision-makers?
What is the place of markets in all of this? For Bardach (pp. 4-5) they seem to be the default social form, and governments intervene in them if and when they fail in various ways. Governments, in turn, are not markets: they regulate or affect markets. For Ostrom et al., all institutions involve distinct participants who interact to produce outcomes. Markets involve a certain range of interactions (bargaining, exchange, but also discussion, persuasion, collaboration, and exit). So do other institutions, including governments. There is no sharp difference between a market and a government (or a church, or a scientific discipline, or an online network). The differences are the details in the boxes above.
What is the role of the public, citizens, and public discussions? These are not mentioned in either diagram. For Bardach, citizens emerge as audiences and sometimes as sources of political constraint. The analyst should consider public opinion because it’s too hard to implement advice that is deeply unpopular in a democracy. Those are narrow roles for the public. In Ostrom, everyone is part of a complex, dynamic system. That means there are no sharp distinctions among policy-makers, analysts, and citizens. They all make policy in various ways. But should there be a special role for citizens, as such? And can policy promote that role?
Polls usually show that foreign policy is a low-priority issue in US political campaigns. This year is no exception: asked to choose one priority, just 13 percent of prospective voters recently selected foreign policy.
But I think the Iraq and Afghan wars influence Americans in deeper ways. These are not “foreign policy issues,” like how we should address Brexit or North Korea. They represent a wound that hasn’t been treated. The question on people’s minds is not, “What should we do about Iraq?” or even “What should have been done in 2001?” The question underneath people’s explicit thinking is: “What kind of people are in charge of our country?”
After all, the decision to invade Iraq and Afghanistan caused about 60,000 US casualties. (That includes those killed or wounded but not suicides or PTSD cases.)
It is very hard to know how many Iraqis and Afghans have died, because the data are not available and because it’s debatable how much causal responsibility the US holds for the deaths of various combatants and civilians. However, by 2007, 53% of Iraqis were saying that “a close friend or relative” had “been hurt or killed in the current violence.”
The running tab for the two wars is about $6 trillion, which is about 30% of the goods and services that all Americans produce in a year.
And for all this sacrifice and damage, we have lost–failing to attain any of the original objectives of the Bush Administration. Iran has the most power in Iraq; we are negotiating a ceasefire with the Taliban, whom we supposedly defeated in 2002.
For some Americans, none of this may be very salient. But for others, it reflects a deep betrayal by the global elites who sent our men and women into danger overseas. For still others, it is a classic case of American imperialism running amok. Considering the magnitude of the disaster, the debate has been relatively marginal or even submerged. But I think it’s always just below the surface.
Consider the record of these presidential candidates since 2008:
Hillary Clinton: votes for the war, apparently in large part because she, her husband, and other senior members of her own party favored it (not just because of the Bush Administration). She later calls her vote her mistake but still feels qualified to run for president in 2008 and 2016 and to serve as a hawkish Secretary of State in between. Thus she is partly responsible for managing the war after having helped to start it. When she comes before the voters, she loses both times.
Barack Obama: against the war from the outset, not in Washington when it starts, seems to want to wind it down; wins the presidency twice.
Jeb Bush: the presumed front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2016, but his brother launched the wars. Wins 4 delegates in the 2016 primary.
Donald Trump: actually fairly positive about the war when it started, but claims to have been against it, which is consistent with his general attitude that foreign interventions waste American lives and treasure. Beats all the establishment Republican primary candidates and Clinton. In office, battles the national security establishment and generally refrains from deploying US military assets overseas. His record conveys a willingness to spend money on the troops, a reluctance to put them in danger, and a contempt for the top brass. Now he’s in a good position for reelection.
Joe Biden: as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he votes to authorize the war. Although he is the former vice president in a popular Democratic administration, he looks likely to lose the current primary.
Pete Buttigieg: he opposes the Iraq War yet serves in Afghanistan–sort of the opposite of the bipartisan elites who started the war without putting themselves in danger. Considering that he’s the 38-year-old mayor of the 4th-largest city in Indiana, he’s done pretty well in a presidential primary campaign.
Bernie Sanders: the only Democratic primary candidate who can provide clear evidence that he was opposed to the war and tried to stop it. This is credible not only because his House vote was recorded but because he has opposed almost all US interventions since the 1970s.
If you believe (as I tend to) that dominant US institutions deserved to be sustained and protected even after the debacle of these wars, then there should have been a much deeper house-cleaning. It’s true that Members of Congress who voted for the war faced a hard choice with limited knowledge and no foreknowledge of the 19 years ahead. Nevertheless, they chose wrong and should have been banished from public life unless they took full responsibility for their own decisions and used their power to prevent anything similar from happening again. You don’t shake off hundreds of thousands of deaths, a $6 trillion bill, and a catastrophic defeat and move on to other topics. National leadership is a privilege, not a right, and if you help cause a disaster, you lose the privilege.
Some Americans never had strong reasons to sustain dominant US institutions. They have now been joined by people for whom the past 19 years provide reasons for distrust–whether they believe that globalist elites have betrayed real Americans or that America is the global bully of the neoliberal era. Although I make no equivalence between Trump and Sanders–they are opposites in character, policy proposals, and commitment to democracy and rule of law–a national campaign between those two is surely a consequence of decisions made by 2003.
